No development aid for anti-abortion charities?
The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) has announced that it will stop giving funds to organisations that follow the Trump administration's anti-abortion rules. Is this a logical step for effective development aid or shameful and dogmatic insistence on principles?
The focus must be on women's lives
The Sida's decision is correct, Dagens Nyheter believes:
“Studies show that unlike other forms of aid, support for organisations that offer abortion and prevention is very effective and reduces maternal mortality. If the organisations with which we work decide today to follow Trump's orders, we must give our money to other organisations that are willing to inform women about abortions and to perform them. ... The goal must be to ensure that as many women as possible have access to contraception and abortion. ... Women's lives must be given priority over simplistic policies.”
Snooty feminist foreign policy
A political battle is being waged at the expense of aid organisations, Expressen believes:
“The Sida's decision will affect 20 to 40 organisations. One of them is Rädda Barnen, or Save the Children Sweden, whose international leadership has accepted the US's new regulations. This organisation will now have to play tricks with its aid programmes in eight south-Saharan countries. To receive the equivalent of roughly five million euros which it was counting on for the period 2016 - 2020, it must now establish a local organisation with all the necessary structures. Expensive bureaucracy at the expense of the poor just so our feminist foreign policy doesn't feel sullied by Donald Trump.”